Dirty John: Seduction and Deception

From a reader:

The LA Times has a front page story along with several other full pages in the first section devoted to a piece they are calling Dirty John, along with a 6 episode podcast.  It is a true story that happened over the last few years about a sociopath named John who married a lonely rich woman and then became abusive and went after her daughter.  [SPOILER EDITED] It happened last summer and it’s amazing to see how this is playing out as a feature story. Anyway, it should be a pretty good portrait of how an SP gets released from jail,  immediately finds, seduces and marries his next victim and deals with her suspicious children.  The wife secretly recorded over 100 of their conversations after she finally came to (she ignored thousands of red flags and believed every one of his lies), so the podcast includes many audio clips of him trying to seduce/con her.  And she gave the newspaper all their pics.  They are publishing a piece of the story every day this week.  I’m not sure when the first episode of the podcast starts, maybe tomorrow.

A red flag from the article:

He had thick dark hair and a warm, friendly smile that invited trust. His eyes were hazel-green, with the quality of canceling out the whole of the world that wasn’t her, their current focus.

Fan mail (part 3)

From a reader:

How refreshing and incredibly relieving it is to see someone whose brain works in a similar fashion to mine. While a world in which I didn't have to remember to blink and frown when someone is crying would be ideal, it is enough to know that there are others who are out there calculation, analyzing, and interesting every day of their lives. If you're ever in [my area], it would be my pleasure to shake your hand and discuss the general world. You do a great service by presenting a thoughtful and accurate public face for sociopaths.

Letter from a sociopath

From a reader:

I just stumbled upon your blog this morning between tea and eggs while I was doing preliminary research for a critique of the movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley".  My paper is focused on sociopathic behavior.  What I discovered, and what initially stymied my interest, were my own sociopathic tendencies.  Now I am (recently) 20 years old and studying film and gender at a liberal arts school in the United States.  I have never been too interested in much psychology or psychoanalysis for fear of self-diagnosis, but as a marijuana-addled young adult I am constantly questioning my identity. I come form a Gypsy background, and, to put it simply, have always felt like a social parasite.  Not for no reason, I partook in my share of moral offenses and such, but the explanation for these immoral impulses and the lack of empathy that accompanied was always my upbringing.  My mother and father were both deal seekers, often stealing what they couldn't afford or what they deemed they deserved.  But I was always perplexed about the sort of satisfaction me and my two younger brothers received from "sabotaging" public places or simply taking things that weren't ours.  Why were we different?  Were we different?  Could it all be summed up to our Gypsy mother who raised us alone for 10 years?

Although these questions were always on the back burner, they didn't affect my immediate life too much (except when my best friend found out I took his Ipod about a year ago; or my ex-girlfriend discovered the constant lies I invented to cover up inconsequential things; or the time I was arrested for shop-lifting at Target after two weeks of ripping off Health Food stores up and down the East Coast).  Nonetheless, I am very adept at observing the world around me and fitting in as best I can, "getting in" as best I can even as a constant outside observer.  I mean I observe everything, from the way people hold their hands in class when asking a question, to the way my friends adjust their pants so as to fit "conventionally" over their Ralph Lauren boxers.  I am a quick study too, often emulating the desirable traits around me and excelling at them faster, or more attractively, than the person I got it from!  Throughout the stages of my life, I have always had one close, very close, male friend who is a little more "popular", or maybe a better word "adept", at "life" or the particular goals with which I am interested in achieving.  We are constantly around each other, and I am constantly taking silent notes on how to be.  How I should go about achieving my life.  Sometimes I feel like goals aren't even mine and I construct them to more emulate a lifestyle that I desire.  I am always single, they always have long-term girlfriends (mind you I am athletic and do have a lot of sex, but I see too many flaws in every woman, too many turn-offs for me to even consider more sophisticated approaches like a date.)

I am rambling because the preverbal lightbulb literally went "click!" today as I scoured your site.  I feel very vulnerable right now, but also excited to (possibly) belong to an esoteric group of individuals.  I am not asking for any sort of response or advice, although both would be wonderful, I just have  a couple qualms and reservations that accompany a brand new way of thinking about life for me.  

a. as of right now (and more or less 3 years back)  I have been smoking pot on a daily basis.  I know that sociopathy is a complicated neurological phenomena, but from what I understand the orbitofrontal cortex is a key player in terms of what it controls.  The OC is also the focal point for a lot of neurological research structured around cannabinoid transmission.  This interests and concerns me.  If the use of marijuana exacerbates sociopathic tendencies, what are the immediate (and more longitudinal) consequences of smoking weed for someone like me?

b.  I have two younger brothers (age 15 and 18) who also smoke a lot of pot, but started earlier than me (I started at the age of 16, them 13, 14 or maybe 15).  They have their own lives and, I think, sociopathic tendencies as well, but ultimately they look up to me for guidance as they always have in a pseudo-hostile world and I want to give them the information they need to make valuable life decisions NOW before they pass a certain point of no return (if there is one).

I know this sounds like an overdue confession more suitably aimed a psychologist's way, but... meh.

 M.E.: I have no idea about pot.  I never have been into any sort of mind altering substance, mainly because I am a complete control freak and I don't have any inhibitions I would like to give up.  But maybe there are other people who would know better.

A sociopathic story (part 2)

(cont.)

I am becoming better at my game. Two years ago, I went on a trip with a group of 6 people for four months. Two of the people there were married, and the woman was particularly easy to read. She had so many weak points that I simply couldn't help myself. I seduced her because I could, and I wanted to, and because it made me feel powerful. Her husband made it easy by verbally harassing her, or at least saying things that could very easily be reconstructed in her memory to seem that way.

Currently I completely possess the mind of another woman, but that happened nearly by accident. I would not have chosen her as a target because she is too wrapped up in the social web at the university that I go to, and now I can't get rid of her even though she bores me. I can't figure out how to break the relationship without having to rebuild an entire network of people at this school. I'm sure that I can figure out a way to do this, but I've never really had to. Change of location has always been my go to method for cutting off contact, but I can't leave here for another 2 years.

I suppose my greatest question is how do you prevent yourself from becoming bored? I need to explain that better. I'm never actually bored as I always have my mind and other people's minds to play with. What I mean is: how do you continue to do one job, or make it through a degree, or generally have any commitment that lasts longer than a year? Or is that just impossible for you?

To be clear, I make no claims to the title of sociopath, as I think that is probably quite meaningless in its current state, but there are certain qualities which I share with sociopaths, enough for me to find the concept fascinating. I think I share all of the qualities on the checklist except trouble with the law and violence towards animals (I never understood the draw, my feeling on this is very neutral. I see no reason to either hurt or not hurt animals)

In any case, I will continue to read your blog whether I hear from you or not. Just thought that I would introduce myself.

M.E.: I don't really fight the boredom, I just go from one thing to the next. My attention span has historically been 3-5 years. By the second or third year of anything I am always looking for my next move. Luckily I have managed to stay in a relatively related field, although vastly different types of jobs within that field. My problem isn't even so much boredom, as an inability to make myself do anything that I don't want to do. It's a good thing that I am motivated in part by prestige and money, which I naturally equate with power.

A sociopathic story (part 1)

From a reader who identifies with sociopathy:

I was home schooled in a very religious household (my father was a senior pastor at a church in our town), and was never the centre of attention in any group of friends, and even after I eventually went to a public high school, I always preferred to remain on the outside. People in general never really interested me in a long term way, and my ability to maintain friendships has always been held back by the fact that as soon as someone is no longer nearby, I find it much easier to move on to a new friend than to try to maintain any form of long distance communication. There really is no reward in that for me. I suppose that all of that is to say that I never really thought much about the differences that I noticed between myself and others.

When I was about 13, one of my best friends father died. It was a chainsaw accident, the blade kicked back while he was cutting brush and cut most of the way through his neck. His wife was the one who found him. It was the first major outpouring of grief that I had ever had to witness, and I think it was the first time that I realized that I would have to put on a show to avoid being though of as heartless. I wasn't very good at it, but I used the oldest excuse: I'm in shock, I'll process my emotions later.

Shortly thereafter, I took a trip to Africa and watched people live the worst life possible and felt no sympathy for them. I could only feel disdain for them. I saw it as their fault that they could not pick themselves up, that they wasted what little they had on worthless shit like cell phones. I attributed these feelings to the antimalarial drug I was taking, mefloquine, which has been known to have unpredictable psychological effects.

At this point, of course, none of this seemed odd to me. It occurred to me that everyone must be doing something like this. After all, people always talk about everyone wearing masks. Maybe I am not so different?

Near the end of high school, I began to notice some other oddities about myself. Before then, I had never thought of myself as a manipulative person. As I thought about my interactions with people, however, I realized that, while I never was popular, I couldn't remember any time where I had a conversation or argument where I had not gotten what I wanted. People always had a favourable impression of me. It wasn't that I was trying to manipulate people specifically, it was just that I would decide what I wanted to happen, start talking to them, and it would happen. More recently (I am now 23), I have taken to more conscious exercise of this skill, making a game out of attempting to elicit certain responses from the people around me.

I also began having episodes which I would describe as "rage breaks" in an otherwise completely calm persona. It didn't take much, but it took a very specific type of incident, and I would lose control for short bursts of time. Minor incidents usually involved someone's assertion that they were more important or more powerful than I was. More major incidents were usually stemmed from a similar cause but involved physical aggression towards me as well. My responses in those times ranged from insults to throwing someone through a door.